


Memories I can't recall

by AHartintheWoods



Category: Inception (2010), Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-05 05:42:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4168065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AHartintheWoods/pseuds/AHartintheWoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Fury Road, there was Arthur and Eames.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So it's been a very long time since I've written fanfic so please be kind. Also this is more a germ of an idea and may develop into a full story in the future.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing, not even Buddy, my cat, he is his own man.

But If you loved me  
Why'd you leave me?  
-Kodaline

  

Before there was Fury Road or Furiosa or Immortan Joe or the Citadel, there was Eames and Arthur. It wasn't the love story of the ages, nor without heartache (they were after all both 'miserable bastards' at times), but in all his long life, it was one of the few times Eames felt whole.

Eames, a name that appealed to him due to the mathematical complexity of the Eames chair, was even then quite old. He had gone by many names and many ways; had seen war, and strife and the many evils that men do, and in this witness had found within himself the ability to mimic, to lose himself in another's mind, to become another, and it was this skill that he had proven him a valuable asset in the field of dream inception. This was how he had met Arthur. He would later tell the man that the path of events made sense in their own way, it was after all "leading me to you, darling, always to you". To which Arthur, in his more honest moments, would simply reply, "That's actually somewhat terrifying" but he would smile and neither would mention the coming years and the other paths that awaited them both.

Dom had introduced them; Eames extending a hand, a smile writ large upon his face, almost licking his lips, and Arthur nodding, stepping back, saying "back to work then, yes?" A bloody tease you, but oh those eyes.

Their business had been dreams, the manipulation of and exploration of that state in which all of us drop our guard. Later when Eames and Arthur had gotten to know the details of each other, from likes and dislikes, to birthmarks and freckles to morning bed head and afterglow, they had spoken of age and all that that (at least for Eames) entailed. It had been a difficult topic but then Arthur had asked about his totem, his hand brushing the dice in his pocket and Eames had told him of the poker chip carried often but not always, and Arthur pale and suddenly so still, had asked why. Eames had said simply that in dreams "I get older" but here "I just go on", and after all one does not always need a guide home when one knows the way so well.  
In the desert, the high sand dunes that stretched far into the horizon and the sun blinding, erasing memory and being, Eames (by then different, by then silent, by then Max) had lost himself, lost speech, lost fear, lost love, lost Arthur. 

He'd simply kept going; there was no waking up to a different world, no totem to confirm that these past years had simply been an illusion. Pity he couldn't sleep.


	2. No Time like the Old Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A possible continuation of the story, comments are most definitely welcomed as I'm very much a newbie to this.

He is born into a blessed tribe, or at least that’s what his mother says. Others in the village speak of it, the Stop, as more of a curse. But if he ever worries, his mother’s words soothe him. She tells him that at some point he will stop changing, stop growing and simply be who he is meant to be, for that person out there who will someday need him, love him. The age at which this happens is unknowable and for some happens very young. His older brother, Adalwin, looks to be a boy of 12 though is in fact in his late teens when Eames is born. This cease in maturation has its difficulties and most boys wish desperately throughout their teen years for just one more day, one more year so that they might outgrow their acne, clumsiness or insecurity; the girls in turn wish desperately for the awkwardness of puberty to fade before they stop changing altogether. Some proved unlucky in this regard, others like Eames, waited so long, that by the time the blessing struck them, they had long despaired of ever finding love at all. 

The Stopping also carries with it some luck, after all it is a promise of future love, of being needed, wanted and to some this would be enough, yet it also bestows an almost indestructability to those under its spell. After all, his mother says, “how can you be expected to meet your own true love if you die of fever, or a fall before the fated day?” So those under the curse, or blessing, or however you might want to see it, were often given the harshest, most dangerous jobs, the Stopping a promise that they would return at the end of each day. This power disappears upon finding one’s match so they may both live and age and die together. 

The world then was unknown, and very young, and it’s borders had long before been established by the people whose faces he saw every day as a child. It held mystery and danger to venture outside those borders but would soon become necessity as many of the villages’ children had ceased changing and their matches could not be found within the limits of their small parcel of land. The villagers are fearful of outsiders, fearful of the world, matches before traveling into the village by accident only to find love and stay, but this rarely happens anymore and soon some most venture away to find love, as it has not come for them yet.

This becomes irrelevant when the world does indeed come for them, but not for love but for devastation and for the delight that fear brings. He is tending the sheep in the fields, 19 years old, not yet blessed, when it happens. He stumbles into town the next day, in search of food, his mother’s embrace and sleep. He finds instead burning homes, his people dead, and his family massacred. It is only his brother, Adalwin, who rises from the ashes, thought dead by the marauders, but still awaited by future love and therefore unable to rest. It is with him and four others that the man who would become Eames first ventures into the world.


	3. Road Warriors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you like this please comment, I'm still so new to writing I have no idea if I should continue this story or just move on. It's turning a bit too well...cheesy :-)

They travel for years, the need to eat, survive and move overwhelming their desire to grieve for all that they have lost. They dabble in many trades, though stick to the ones that require movement as Adalwin still looks to be a boy and his unchanging nature would be quickly noticed in a small village. At first fellow travelers take them to be brothers, not guessing whom among them is older or younger of course, but still they remain to the outside world brothers. As the years pass Adalwin begins to speak of Eames as his father and he in turn, calls the boy his son, though when they are alone they berate and harass and joke as brothers, both knowing the true ranking. 

When they have been traveling for almost 10 years, Adalwin suddenly wakes in the middle of the night, steps from the cart, which they have called their home for almost as long and disappears. Eames spends the next three days searching for his brother, only to find him in a small village several miles away. The boy, who will later tell his brother that he felt a stirring, a call, is outside a blacksmith’s shop, too shy to step in yet unable to walk away. Inside a woman, in her early twenties, works the kiln. Her name is Godgifu, a recent widow, trying desperately to prove herself in this new role she’s been forced to take on since her husband’s death. 

With Eames’ urging his brother steps into the shop and catches his lady’s attention. The woman does not find the boy cute but cumbersome, in the way and an annoyance, and it is only when Adalwin offers his services, to be an apprentice, a helper, that she smiles. 

Eames seeing his brother happy, needed, and somehow different but not, leaves his brother under her tutelage and travels away from the small village, alone for the first time in his life. When he returns, his brother is noticeably older, stronger, happier, the haunted boy gone and replaced by a young man pining desperately for an older woman. In future years, they will marry, have children, be happy and Eames who no longer ages, will go on alone. He is unneeded in this world.


End file.
